“Damn you.” His voice was low, guttural. “I will be a part of this baby’s life.” He grasped her elbow, pulling her closer, into the furious heat radiating from his body. “I want to be there for every doctor’s appointment from now on. I want you to consult me before you make any decisions that will affect the baby. And I expect shared custody after the baby’s born.”
Here was once again King Monroe in action, the arrogant, dominant man who took for granted that everyone would immediately accede to his wishes at all times. Exactly what she’d been afraid of.
“You have no right to barge in here and start making demands,” she snapped at him.
“The hell I don’t,” Logan snarled. “You chose to keep this baby from me. I’m not going to play nice with you. From now on, things go my way.”
Claire wanted to shout—to laugh hysterically, even—at the sheer conceit of such a statement. “This is exactly why I kept the baby from you. You don’t just get to control everything and everyone. You don’t get to control me or this child.”
“You brought this on yourself.” He snorted. “Did you think I’d be pleased you tried to keep my child from me? It doesn’t exactly warm my heart. In fact, I’ve never been more pissed in my life. You’re lucky I haven’t decided to sue for sole custody.”
“You wouldn’t win.”
Logan just shrugged, a smug grin curling his lips. “I never lose. Never. So you better get used to accommodating me when it comes to the baby. Because if you don’t…” He shrugged again, the smug smile going into full bloom.
Logan stalked into his living room, so angry he could ram his fist through a wall. Derek looked up, in the middle of watching Logan’s flat screen, devouring a pepperoni pizza, and scratching Caesar’s big, white belly. Upon seeing his master enter the room, the cat issued an inquisitive meow, but didn’t bother to budge from his sprawl across Derek’s lap.
“Traitor,” Logan muttered, glaring at Caesar as he began pacing the length of the living room.
“Hello to you too,” Derek said dryly.
“Not you,” Logan clarified, tugging absently at his left earlobe. “The goddamn cat.”
“Trouble at the office?” Derek asked rather unconcernedly around a mouthful of pizza.
“Sort of.” Logan stopped in his tracks, looking at his friend. “You’re going to be an uncle.”
Derek nearly choked on his pizza, but took a swig of the bottled water at his side to wash it down. “You didn’t say you were involved with someone, Loge.”
“I’m not.” Logan laughed self-derisively. “Well…hell, it’s complicated. She’s a coworker in the middle of a divorce and we got carried away on a business trip a few months ago, and now she’s pregnant.”
Derek whistled. “Sounds like a role in a movie I was offered a few years back.”
“It does sound like a movie plot,” Logan agreed, sending his friend a wry grin. “A bad movie plot, like one of those Lifetime channel things women go nuts over. I don’t blame you for turning it down.” He resumed his infuriated pacing. “Christ, Derek. I don’t know how it happened. I never date coworkers. I’ve always believed in my no-intra-office romance policy. I’ve never even had a chance of being a father. Not since Abigail, anyway.”
Derek nodded, his blue eyes sympathetic, pitying almost. He didn’t say anything, didn’t need to. Both men knew what had occurred and what its effect on Logan had been.
“I still wonder sometimes,” Logan murmured, mostly to himself. “How would my life be different? I drive by a playground, see the little kids, and I wonder…” He allowed his words to drift into nothingness. Sharing emotion of any sort wasn’t an especially easy task for Logan. It made him uncomfortable as hell, in fact.
“You can’t torture yourself for something that’s not your fault,” Derek said. “Believe me. For a long time, I blamed myself for things that weren’t mine to claim. It wasn’t until my second trip to rehab that I realized I’d been blaming myself for everything that went wrong in my life. Don’t do that to yourself, Loge.”
“This whole thing just brought it all back to me.” Logan finally grew tired of stalking the room and sank into a chair flanking the sofa. “She was planning on keeping the baby a secret. Claire, I mean. Tonight she just laid it on me and it was like I was eighteen again, frustrated and helpless.”
“But you’re not there anymore,” Derek pointed out reasonably, taking another bite of pizza. “You aren’t a scared kid trying to make something of himself and Claire isn’t Abigail. This is a totally different situation.”
Yes, damn it, it was. But Logan kept hearing Abigail’s voice echoing inside his mind, telling him he wasn’t ready to be a father. Mingling with Claire’s, telling him he wasn’t human. Goddamn it, was he that much of a failure? That the women in his life preferred no baby or no father when faced with the prospect of him as the father of their child infuriated him.
What the hell was wrong with Claire, anyway? He wasn’t a no-one anymore, a kid on the street whose own parents hadn’t even wanted him. He’d made a name for himself, constructed an empire, made something from nothing. He was Logan Monroe. He was someone.
Except maybe Claire could see through him for the impostor he was. When her blue gaze had settled on him tonight, he’d been unable to shake the sense that Claire had examined him, measured him, and ultimately found him lacking.
“Claire thinks I’ll be a shitty father,” Logan found himself admitting. He reached down and tugged his shirt from his pants. Damn it, he was tired of being tucked and wrinkle free. “She said I don’t know how to care about people.”
“Crazy woman talk,” Derek advised sagely, popping the remainder of his pizza crust into his mouth. “Too muchDr. Phil. Trina used to pull that shit on me too.”
“Did you listen to her?” Logan asked, curious even though he didn’t know quite why.
Derek chased the pizza with a long swig of water, then gave Caesar a lengthy tummy rub before looking back up at Logan. “Honestly, Loge, I made a point of never being sober when she decided we should have ‘talks’.”
